We have these great signs spray-painted next to sewer drains along the roadsides here in Southern California that have a graphic of a fish skeleton, and around it, it says: “Drain Empties Into Ocean”. This is so we won’t pour all of our poisonous refuse into these drains I suppose. I guess they just want us to carry our buckets full of cyanide and strychnine and 20-molar sulfuric acid and stuff around all day or something. Maybe we’re supposed to pour all of our poison down the toilet at home, huh? Or maybe just drink it. But this message has always been quite amusing to me, because whenever I see this sign, I always think to myself: “If the ocean is just filled with nothing but fish skeletons already, what difference does it make what we pour down there?” Because honestly, that’s what it looks like they’re indicating.
I think the idea is that we’re supposed to see the fish skeleton and feel all guilty about all the fish that will become fish skeletons due to our wanton disregard of proper hazardous materials disposal, but are we really supposed to just walk all the way home with our wheelbarrow-full of glowing nuclear waste? If they really want us not to pour all of our liquid death and mayhem into the storm drains, then why not have a picture of a smiling fish? Then we’d see this happy fish, and not wanting to ruin its mood, we will somehow prevent ourselves from proceeding with our hazardous waste disposal at the local major intersection. (Oh, did I forget to mention that these are always at major street intersections with lights and turn lanes and the whole nine yards? Well, they are. And I only mention this because it’s not really the kind of place where I’d expect to find a lot of illegal clandestine toxic waste dumping. Oh, but maybe that’s why so many people do it: because we’d never be expecting it! Oh, but then how come the sign is painted there if nobody was ever expecting it to occur there?) The best would probably be to have a smiling, happy fish, and then next to it to have a fish skeleton with a circle with a line through it painted over it. This would tend to indicate that there are live fish at the end of this drain, and that it is, in fact, undesirable to force them against their will to become fish skeletons prematurely or unwittingly. (Unless it’s like Fish Halloween or something, and they’re just dressing up as fish skeletons to scare each other and/or go trick-or-treating, and we’re just misunderstanding what’s going on in the ocean or something. Rather than a bunch of dead fish skeletons, it could just be a scary fish costume party! You never know.)
But you know, maybe the sign looks like it does for another reason. It is possible that the local government agency that’s in charge of this storm drain sign painting and fish protection stuff is merely reporting what they’ve been finding lately. For when they go look at where the storm drains dump out into the ocean, all they find is a bunch of fish skeletons swimming around. And that may have nothing whatsoever to do with all the dangerous and illegal poisonous and/or hazardous waste disposal we’re all covertly engaged in at our local major street intersections, because when you think about Los Angeles restaurants, what’s the most popular and ubiquitous kind of cuisine that’s offered at the finer eating establishments hereabouts? Why, it’s sushi, isn’t it? And you know what that means! That’s correct: all the local sushi restaurants are obviously sneaking through the storm drains from their local intersections all the way down to the ocean, and they’re grabbing all their fresh fish from there, where they just fillet them right there in the surf and just drop the fish skeletons right there in the water at the place where the storm drains empty into the ocean! And they’re obviously doing that so as to try to pin the blame on innocent toxic waste polluters like the rest of us! (Those fiends!)
Look, everybody knows from horror and science fiction movies that dumping toxic waste doesn’t make fish turn into fish skeletons, but rather, it makes them mutate into monster fish-man hybrid creatures that then go on a man-eating rampage on the beach during teen parties and such. That’s the real threat from the hazardous waste dumping, and we all know it! So look sign maker guys, we all know it’s sushi restaurants who are to blame here (or it’s fish Halloween parties), and so we all laugh off your anti-toxic waste/hazardous pollution dumping signs with your fish skeletons on them! If you really want us to believe there’s a threat, and convince us to cease and desist our awesome fun tradition of illegal dumping activities, then show us a mutant fish monster on the painted warning sign, like perhaps the monster from The Horror of Party Beach: that’s what they mostly end up looking like, I think, from the times I’ve accidentally created them with my secret dumping of glowing radioactive waste and stuff. And when we see a painting of one of those fish monsters, we’ll all know it really is the dumping of toxic sludge that’s to blame, and maybe we’ll finally stop doing it all the time.
Here’s what the new storm drain signs look kind of like (I can’t find the new ones here online yet):
Here are some sign designs that I think would work better to prevent dumping:
And here’s what the real fish monsters mutated by illegal clandestine toxic waste dumping generally look like (They should use these in the signs if they want us to stop dumping all of our vats and bathtubs full of toxic waste sludge down the storm drains.):
